Saturday, August 31, 2013

Technical Difficulties

Last week I went to start my boat.
I started it in the Spring (was that so long ago?) and it started right up.
Then the rains came.
And when it was sunny I was at work.
When it was rainy, I was at home.
And there was some nice weather where I had other obligations.
Distractions like working on vehicles, church, wedding receptions, graduations, visits with good friends, all the stuff that will get in the way of going out on the boat.

So the boat sat a lot. Clean, shiny, waiting for me.
Sort of like my dog.

Cali

And then it came.

The day to boat..

After charging the batteries, I cranked her over.

And over.

And over.

So the gas had probably gummed up a jet in the carburetors I figured.

This happened when I had the boat painted some years back.

A two week paint job had lasted two months and the boat had sat in a hot paint booth for that time.

We took some friends out on the maiden voyage and didn't realize that as we were tooling slowly around, one of the carbs was not delivering the fuel oil (oil being the important word here) to the two cylinders it was supposed to be feeding.

That cylinder seized up right after I attempted to go full throttle.

I did not want to have that happen again.

I did not have the time to rebuild and re-synch the carbs.

I didn't have time to tow it to a shop, and so:

Last Saturday, I drove Scherie to breakfast, then to Meijer's so she could shop.

As she was shopping, or more accurately, while I was waiting for her, I drove over to the boat shop.

As I was was looking at the various fluids on the shelf, the owner asked what I was looking for.

I said "something with 'miracle' or 'magic' on the label".

He asked what was going on and I told him.

I was hoping to find some way of cleaning the jets with no disassembly.

24 comments:

Observe that doctors once took an oath that states "first: do no harm." The postmodern philosophers convinced the Med schools not to do that anymore. Few people (other than yours truly) noticed let alone squawked.

Thus it was inevitable that other less directly lethal forms of "do no harm" would be eradicated.

A whole lot more than our vehicles are screwed up. Postmodernism: the philosophy of death.

Pasc:I appreciate your philosophical approach to the query.I actually deleted a phrase I had in there about needing the FDA (Ethanol: food or drug?) to protect our vehicles healthy intake, but we don't need another regulatory agency. But maybe we do here.More to the point, Pasc:Am I remembering faulty that you know chemistry?Would it work like I thought it did?

I don't wonder anymore.But the problem in this case was long disuse allowing absorption of moisture.I've been encouraged to use the old boat gas in my car in small amounts to dispose of it (I've 12 gallons in the garage).But high amount of ethanol will destroy some critical elements in older (perhaps newer) vehicles fuel systems.It's known to dissolve pickup tubes in chain saws for instance.Premium has lower percentages of ethanol.

Yes, I've got a lot of chemistry in my academic background, but woefully bare of it professionally. However, there are some things you never forget.

Yes, ethanol is the key to creating an immiscible pair. Oil and water do not mix remains the problem. Ethanol, though polar, by itself will mix fairly well with non-polar gasoline (oil). But it's great affinity for water will cause it to attach to any moisture. As the molecules of EtOH come near the surface of the fuel, it will attach to H2O vapor and create an EtOH/water mixture. Eventually the water content will be so great that the EtOH will separate and give you the immiscible region. Of course that ethanol/water mixture is too nonflammable, hence the problem.

That's something the powers that be must be fully aware of, hence my inclination to my giving you my first answer first. Ethanol works like Leftists who force their ways into all our institutions claiming discrimination and red-scare tactics wherever they met resistance. As they themselves then insisted on letting in more useless flacks (useless water), for reasons well-known to the destroyers of Western civ ("Hey hey/ ho, ho/ western civ has got to go") all our institutions work about as well to do their reasons for existing as your engines.

You are missing the obvious. The boat needs attention and more work than a few trips a year are worth. But your fur child waits patiently to give more than she takes! There's LOVE in those eyes and zero work required.

Not zero work.Lots of belly rubbing, tussling, picking up the logs she drags off the firewood pile before I can mow.Clean up the mud and hair she leaves in her bedroom (the utility room).But the LOVE! There are days when she can't be bought off with a biscuit when I'm to beat to play with her.She must be paid attention to!